On
May 13, 2017, we joined the Taong Bundok Mountaineering Club to provide school
supplies to students from the Dumagat Tribe in Sitio Kabuoan, Brgy Puray,
Montalban Rizal. This is one of the several small communities of this
tribe in the mountains of Rizal in the Philippines. Our purpose is to
connect with the people in the communities where we hike. We want to give back to the communities who
have allowed us to enjoy their beautiful surroundings.
To
get to Kabuoan from our home in Binan, Laguna, we left at 2:00 a.m. and arrived
at 3:00 a.m. to meet our fellow mountaineers at the Jollibee in Cubao.
This is a fast food restaurant in a huge wet market in Manila about an
hour from our house. There are several Jollibees in this complex, so I
roamed through the market in the middle of the night as trucks full of giant
tuna, other fish and vegetables were being delivered. The butchers were busy
slicing up whole pigs in preparation for the big market day. After
checking out one Jollibee, I finally found the right one in an adjacent
building. After rounding up my family, we quickly ate breakfast, bought
some chicken for lunch and joined the group.
From
Cubao we drove about 1.5 hours to where most of the group abandoned the hired
vans and got into small three wheeled motorcycles called tricycles for the next
leg of the trip. We continued in our SUV to the next stop where we
registered. At this point, we parked our car and got into one of the tricycles
(or as the group called them a “habai habal” ), which is a motorcycle with what
could be called a side car. In this case the side car was a metal cage
with two boards put across so four people could sit down. The main job of these
vehicles is to transport charcoal and wood out of the mountains. So five of us,
plus the driver, took off in this contraption powered by a small cc motorbike.
We bounced for about 45 minutes on dirt roads through a couple of streams
and through small rural communities along the road. The ride was rough
and tough on the bottom, as the seats were hard and the road full of deep ruts.
We
finally arrived at the last motorized stop that our bike driver felt
comfortable taking us. We joined our group and walked for another 30 to
45 minutes to the small village of Kabuoan where we would have our distribution
of school supplies. We had supplies for about 70 children, but it was
evident that more kids had arrived from the bush than we had school supplies.
We were about 52 volunteers organized into about 4 groups including
school supplies, games, publicity and documentation, and cooking team.
Lenore, Katyann and I were on the school supply team. We got to
work organizing the school supplies while the other groups prepared for their
task.
The
Dumagat tribes are native filipino people who originally lived in the lowlands
but migrated to the mountains due to pressure from more aggressive migrants.
Most of the people live in traditional nipa huts made from palm leaves
and bamboo. The Dumagat seem to have
very little documented social structure and according to wikipilipinas
(http://en.wikipilipinas.org/index.php?title=Dumagat), they tend to move on or
split up when conflicts arrive. Most work for low wages and support their
families through hunting and day labor which has become more and more difficult
to procure. The areas that we have visited in Rizal are well deforested.
Even the rivers show few signs of sufficient fish to maintain even a
small population. These people are primarily nomadic, but as their area
of habitation gets smaller and smaller, they are have been forced to settle
into more permanent communities. On our hike, we saw many carrying out
lumber or charcoal from deep in the mountains.
From places even farther in than what we were able to visit.
Although
most people in urban areas speak some English, I found that most of the people
in Kabuoan did not. Most of my interaction with the Dumagat were with the
children. They were very interested in me and seemed very affectionate.
I noticed that if I sat down and given the chance children would sit next
to me and lean on me or rest there hand on my shoulder in a very friendly and
familiar way. The mothers would let us hold their babies. Along the
public road it was not uncommon to see the mothers breast feeding their babies
as the family picked nits out of each other's hair. I assume that they
appreciated our efforts although I noted that it seemed that they were
primarily spectators to our efforts.
I
didn’t see many if any of the community members getting involved in delivering
our project. I don’t know what their perspective is on our assistance.
The motivation of our group stems from the fact that we love to be in the
mountains. We realize that our presence impacts the residents and we want
to be a positive part of the communities where we hike. Helping children
with school supplies should be a great cause. Since I am not part of the
organizers, I do not know what the role of the community was in planning our
event. They seemed very happy that we were there. Our efforts were
focused on the children but we also provided food for everyone. We
brought used clothes that were mainly for children but also some adult clothes.
As our group efforts develop, it will be interesting to see if we can
forge partnerships with these communities that can result in protecting the
natural environment and encouraging development in a way that also supports
efforts to reforest these mountains as well as provides some kind of organic
support for the people who live in these mountains.
The
main organizer and visionary who provides these great experiences is Aris
Olea. He is a multimedia specialist
during the week and mountaineer, environmentalist, community service specialist
extraordinaire. I asked him how he got
started in all these great projects and he replied:
“The reason that I have climbed my first mountain is because of a
heartbreak. I was about to marry someone (which is my girlfriend for 6 six
years that time) when suddenly she broke up with me and decided to marry
someone else. I was so devastated and didn't know what to do. My world
literally crashed in front of me to the point that I even got tired of breathing.
Then a
friend of mine got worried and decided to trick me in climbing Mt.Daraitan. He
said that it's just a "walk in the park" and I can shout all my
frustrations and pain at the top of the mountain. So I said yes to his
invitation... not knowing that 95% of the trails are assault (60-80° slope). I
was in bed for two days cursing my friend after that. But it was really an
amazing experience. I get to release all my tension and stress when I'm on the
top and even though I told to myself that I will never going to try that again,
after just a few weeks... there's this strange feeling which they say that it
was the mountain that is calling... and I must go.
I got
hooked with the thrill and experience. For my initial years of climbing, I was
able to climb 13 mountains which is not bad for a 120kgs guy like me. But
someone teased me that he has climbed 22, so I challenged myself to climb at
least 24 summits/peak in a year. I was able to do 25 last 2016. That was my
first new year's resolution that I was able to complete and it felt so good.
Then from
there, I asked myself, "so what's next?". I don't usually climb a
mountain once I have gone there already, because what's the point of going
back? What would be the purpose? And so the #ClimbWithAPurpose was created.” (Aris Olea)
“Climb with a Purpose” is the slogan and reason behind Taong
Bundok. I am proud to play a small part
in these great activities. Enjoy the
photos! Mike Baldwin
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